Scott joined Apr 29, 2002

I am the founder of DBolical and creator of ModDB, IndieDB and SlideDB. My aim is to make it easier for gamers to find great games/mods no matter their stage of development. And more importantly give game/mod developers a place to share their work and grow their fanbase - without being dependent on press/editors gatekeeping the important news sites.
If you have any ideas or suggestions, hit me up I am always available to talk with the community.

In the interest of continuing to streamline the submission process (for games, mods, engines and hardware), it is now easier then ever for developers and publishers to add their content to the site. Here is what we've done:

Previously, when adding say a mod, you had to navigate a game dropdown with 10,000+ games in it. This was extremely slow and frustrating.

Furthermore, if the game you were interested in wasn't listed, you had to add it to the site then start the mod submission process again.

Now:

Instead of a massive dropdown, the dropdown now smartly shows content you are connected too, or it thinks you want to connect it to.

And if that isn't enough, there is an option to "search" for what you want.

This means you could add a game, then search for it and complete your mod submission.

Groups are also auto-made saving a lot of effort from having to manually create a profile for them.

The above screenshot shows the new system in action. What do you think? No excuse not to add your game or mod to the site now!

So we've recently switched to Cloudflare as a proxy to help cache and speed up the delivery of a lot of the content on our network. Anyhow we never really had any idea how much content we served daily but as you can see from the following graph, it is in excess of 18 million images daily! Hard to believe but something we are very proud of :)

So on the mobile gaming forums lots of randoms visit and promote their "android" game. Some of these posts appear to be legitimate from new developers learning their craft. But the majority look like cheap shovelware - quickly made by companies hoping to make a buck.

The people who post these appear to post once then leave the site. They don't spam anywhere else so technically are not really a pest, but i'm debating disallowing these kinds of posts altogether. What does the community think?

For the most part I just don't get why they bother. They spam even though our system doesn't allow URLs to be typed so they will do things like "Get free games from BESTGAMESONLINE [.] COM". For a start I would have thought that 99.99% of users would avoid the spam to begin with, but who would actually bother to copy and paste that URL and edit it to work? Some spam even without URLs or anything meaningful in their message (are they trying to establish system trust?).

And even if their spam manages to get through we are extremely proactive here and will ban then erase all trace of them from the internet, meaning at best they get a tiny bit of exposure (but not long enough for any visitors or SEO benefits).

A basic look at our system

Either way the spam looks awful to our visitors hurting our reputation, distracts our users who want to see real amazing content from game and mod teams and wastes our time cleaning it up. While we currently get very little spam compared to what we see on some other sites, we ideally want to make it too hard so the spammers just give up and move on. Which is why we have just implemented a custom anti-spam system which updates on the fly. By being one-of-a-kind it should be very hard for the spammers to adapt and adjust too without significant work (unlike on Wordpress et al which have millions of sites using the same system, meaning there is huge upside for the spammers if they figure out a system). An approach like this has worked for us in the past, as it is a great deal of effort to get through just to spam on one site which will delete your message anyhow... and so far in the first 48hours no spam has made it in. Fingers crossed this continues and we will always do all we can to eradicate it!

Thanks to the horrifying game Five Nights at Freddy's which streamers and youtubers are going crazy posting reaction videos about, IndieDB had its biggest day ever. For those interested to see what kind of a spike it generated here are the last 20 days of absolute unique visitors:

Our previous best was 95,000 which occurred in January this year when we announced the 2013 Indie of the Year winner. Great to see IndieDB growing but it still has a long way to go to catch up to ModDB which does 200,000+ every day and it's best is 300,000+

Hey all - so there has been a little concern about some of the terms that us and other sites put in place regarding the content we show. While we cannot change what other sites do, we can change what we do. These terms relate to ownership of user submitted content, ideally we don't want to assert any ownership over the game you made, we just want the rights necessary to distribute content you've submitted to the system.

In an effort to disguinish ourselves from the others sites and show we care and listen to the indie developers we represent, we are working on changing our terms and propose moving from:

Quote:2. Use and ownership of user provided content
If you send to DBolical, or upload to the System, any content of any type ("Content"), including forum posts, commentary, ideas or suggestions whether or not solicited, then: by uploading the Content you license the Content to DBolical as set out in this clause 2; and you must ensure that you are the owner or creator of that content or have received permission from the owner or creator to make such submissions and to licence that content as set out in this clause 2.You expressly authorise and permit DBolical to exercise and to authorise others to exercise all of the rights comprised in copyright and all other intellectual property rights which subsist in the Content and you irrevocably consent to all such exercises. DBolical is not required to compensate you or any other person in any manner for any such exercise or authorisation. In particular, DBolical may use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the Content and other works which are based on them (including by way of adaptation or derivative works) in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, whether or not such use would otherwise be a breach of any person's moral rights, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind. This clause does not limit DBolical's privacy obligations under clause 10.

to

Quote:2. Use and ownership of user provided content
2.1 All rights in any games, addons, modifications and related downloadable content that you upload for distribution via the System (‘User Developed Content'), remain with the owner of such material unless otherwise agreed in writing. You grant to DBolical:

2.1.1 a non exclusive, and sub-licensable licence in all rights in the User Developed Content necessary to facilitate the distribution of the User Developed Content via the System; and
2.1.2 the right to use still images, graphics or any other audio, visual or audio visual elements contained the User Developed Content for the purposes of promotion of the System only.

2.2 All rights in any forum posts, commentary, ideas or suggestions whether or not solicited by DBolical that you send to DBolical or upload to the System, ("User Generated Content"), become the property of DBolical. You acknowledge that by contributing User Generated Content you expressly authorise and permit DBolical to exercise and to authorise others to exercise all of the rights comprised in copyright and all other intellectual property rights which subsist in the User Generated Content and you irrevocably consent to all such exercises. DBolical is not required to compensate you or any other person in any manner for any such exercise or authorisation. In particular, DBolical may without limitation use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Content and other works which are based on them (including by way of adaptation or derivative works) in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, whether or not such use would otherwise be a breach of any person's moral rights, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind. This clause does not limit DBolical's privacy obligations under clause 10.2.3 You warrant that you are the owner or creator of any User Developed Content, or any User Generated Content you choose to upload, or that you have received permission from the owner or creator of any such content to make such submissions and to licence that content as set out in this clause 2. You warrant further that any User Developed Content or User Generated Content uploaded by you is not defamatory in nature, and that it is not malicious, or intended to cause undesired effects, security breaches or damage to the System or other user's property.

So i'm speaking at a panel at Freeplay this Friday 10:45am at ACMI Federation Square theatre entitled "finding a platform" for those interested. Come along if you are able! I'm also headed over to Perth to speak at a gaming workshop so if you are a local check out the flier below and come along.

So on Friday June 29th, I shall be speaking at Game Masters: The Forum on a panel entitled "Creativity & Commerce". Fellow panellists include Tim Schafer (yep Tim of Legend!) and David Surman and Ian Gouldstone from Pachinko Pictures. What an honor it will be to be able to speak alongside these individuals. Super excited and a little nervous though I suspect I will be primarily listening and absorbing their wisdom! Here is the panel bio:

Quote:Following the phenomenal success of Double Fine's Kickstarter campaign, this session will explore a range of models that developers and distributors are investigating to creatively produce games. Panel includes Tim Schafer (Double Fine Productions), David Surman and Ian Gouldstone (Pachinko Pictures), and Scott Reismanis (Desura). Chaired by writer and academic, Dan Golding.

For those in Melbourne, Australia - i'll be speaking at Freeplay on Sunday the 21st of August at 10:00am. Topic of the presentation is "Cheating the Golden Rule". I'll be joined by Farbs and a few other indie game developers. Here is the blurb:

Freeplay wrote:In the traditional studio model, the cry of ‘he who controls the gold makes the rules’ is at the root of everything. Independent development aims to remove that restriction, but we all need to eat. This panel discusses some of the innovations in funding, their good and bad, and some of the best practices in each to make sure that the one controlling the gold is you.

So if you are a local, stop by should be an awesome event and it be great to catch up and chat.